[[User:Pakaran]] did us a great service by retracting his statements. Upon reading his apology, I immediately retracted my opposition to his adminship on the votes for de-adminship page. Real sincerity and reflection was evident. In the end, Pakaran did us all a service by putting his foot in his mouth.
This major concern, after all, isn't really Pakaran's unfortunate comments, but an over-arching problem that the statement epitomized. This episode has alerted us to the prospects of "tyranny of the majority," which seems to be festering and intensifying from my observations. To say the least, it's a quite a banal and elusive danger. It crops up when well-meaning admins engage in such oppressive behavior without even realizing it. Perhaps Pakaran's statement to RickK was a nonchalant Freudian slip. Given the group hysteria that Lance/Hector/Richard's presence has generated, this might not be a baseless conjecture.
Regarding Lance/Hector/Richard, the charges of "vandalism" and "trolling" do not explain the root of the problem. Instead, his bad behavior is a symptom. Since his view of the world starkly diverges - to put it in an understated way - from those of the vast majority of users with whom he's been interacting, joining the Wiki community of users becomes an impossible game to play.
The "red faction" isn't a vandalism problem, but an example of mutual misperception and misjudgment breeding conflict and hostility. On a more practical note, the persistence of the "red faction" in regenerating itself over and over again (almost like Lir and his many incarnations) makes it clear that banning this user, or attempting to chase himaway and make him feel unwelcome, are crude, self-defeating solutions. Since the Wiki mailing list is libertarian country, I'll say that it's like slapping on price controls to curb inflation. Or perhaps putting a bandage on a leaking dam. In other words, it's an unworkable straitjacket that will only confound the problem.
For the problem to subside, Pakaran, RickK, Adam Carr, PMA, Very Verily, Tim Startling, and Robert Merkel (the most virulent critics of our Red user) need to treat him with respect (or at least a facade of respect for the sake of cooperation), allowing Lance/Hector/Riohard to meet his critics at least halfway.
BTW, I know that a few cynics would dismiss these comments, accusing me of a leftist agenda. If these charges crop up, I refer to the October 2003 mailing list, where I was the most ardent critic of banning [[User:RK]]. Recently, I also remarked to [[User:G-Man]] that we desperately lack elderly contributors (giving us Gen-X and Baby Boom biases). I also noted the need to promote more non-Western admins a while ago.
- [[User:172|172]]
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Abe Sokolov wrote:
Since the Wiki mailing list is libertarian country, I'll say that it's like slapping on price controls to curb inflation.
I think this is a useful observation. I'm not sure it's 100% applicable, but the broader point is important. One of the most important observations of economics and game theory as we might apply it to our context here is that "passing a law" with a desirable outcome is not always the same thing as finding a good solution.
The reason I say that Abe's comment may not be 100% applicable is that what we really try to do around here is "tax" bad behavior. We know that we can't really stop "Michael" or "24" or "Plautus" from ever editing again, but we can try to make sure that we impose costs on them with minimal costs to us.
The best responses to problem users are responses that interfere the least with other people, that cost the least amount of good people's time and energy, while imposing the maximum possible difficulty on their continuance of bad behavior. Those are theoretical goals, which various of our software tools achieve to varying degrees.
--Jimbo